24 hour swimming in Austria

Hello dear openwater community ! I just want to share that Austria is slowly waking up and has been starting to organize ultra-marathon swims once a year in the beginning of November at a place called Radkersburg. Even though the event is conducted in a pool I believe the experience that I made there is relevant for open water swim-training. From November 7-8 the 4th Race was conducted with 468 participants, with 90 solo swimmers and 378 relay Swimmers (78 Teams of 5 swimmers with 12 swimmers missing). People were highly motivated: 468 participants swam 140,368 laps (=7,018.4 km). On the average each swimmer covered 15km. There were almost as many female as male participants. Have a look at the event My previous history: Until now my longest endurance swim was 12km (7.5 miles) long. I covered the complete length of the flooding channel in Vienna/Austria that is running parallel to the Danube River in 2004. (The flooding channel has stagnant water except when there is an overflow after heavy rainfalls). Except for one bottle filled with isotonic that I dropped into the water on the half way-point I swam the whole distance without support. I did well until the end but I wondered if I would have been able to swim all the way back, because all of my muscles were hurting pretty badly. Now for the first time I had the opportunity to explore my boundaries with the supply of excellent support and under constant supervision. To my surprise I accomplished more than I ever expected: 626 Laps (=31.3km or nearly 20 miles) within 24 hours. I didn't swim during the night but I hired a room instead. I came in with rank 14 out of 59 swimmers. Here are the results The pool was outside with heated water but because of the cold air on my back, I was using a swim-suit. These are my experiences that I would like to share with You: 1. I was using a swim suit for the first time in my life. I have to admit that a swim suit brings tremendeous advantages: not only does it keep the swimmer warm but in preserving his body heat it keeps him from a loss of energy postponing the feeling of being drained. The suit improves the bouyancy of the swimmer thus minimizing the drag allowing higher speed and/or less effort. The results achieved with a swim-suit may be cut down by 10-15% compared to the same swim done without a wet suit. 2. Pools provide ideal training conditions for solo-training with the least amount of organizational effort. Just put a bottle filled with some power-drink to the edge of the pool and refresh yourself let say every kilometer. (=every 20 minutes if You are as slow of a swimmer as I am). If You are heaving a break, just go the water tap, and mix up some more power drinks. 3. eating: I didn't do some heavy carbo-loading before I started at the competition, instead I had two strong meals of cereal mixed with milk between the time I got up and the time that I started at 4:00pm. The cereal was a mix of oates, dry fruits, chocolate flakes. Eating during the swim was counterproductive. As I mentioned before, I started at 4:00pm last Friday and swam until 10:30pm. At 9:00pm I started to eat bananas and to drink fruit juice which caused me to rush to the toilet -> instant diarrhea ! But my stomach was very forgiving and allowed me to learn from my mistake without any consequences. So I had a good night's sleep at my room, got up early the next morning and had a strong breakfast. At 9 o'clock I went back into the water and continued my swim until the deadline of 4:00pm. No more eating during the swim, but a lot of drinking and a peaceful stomach ! 4. Don't change your habits during a competition, a solo crossing, etc ... Whatever your body is used to from your training sessions it will also endure when it counts. If your body is used to eating during the training, than eat also in the competition. 5. Training: besides my regular "maintenance" training of a minimum of 2km per week I started one month before the competition having training sessions of 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8 and 2 km at my standard pool here in Vienna. I swam more during the competition (31.3 km) than in my entire training the month before (27 km). Except for the last 2 km, I didn't use a swim-suit for my training. I am still positively shocked that I did more than twice as much as all my life before within 24 hours. I needed such an event to give myself a push to try and see how far I can go with excellent support. I finished well and could have continued for some more hours! When I arrived back home I wasn't famished to the point that I had to plunder the fridge, I just continued to eat normally. I would like to encourage the reader to look out for such events, because they are an excellent opportunity to redefine your limits. My conclusion: A long open water swim without a suit (20 km plus) with permanent support is no longer out of reach for me, even if I am taking into account the "cheating effect" of my swim suit. :) cheers Gerald